Surrendering Your Bunch of Keys

 

The submission of the wife is her willful surrender to the authority and leadership of her husband. Can that surrender be measured on a linear scale that stretches from defiant and unyielding to totally surrendered? Or is it an all-or-nothing type of transaction - either you are or you are not submissive? Perhaps there is another way to visualize submission.

 

Think of a woman as a complex being comprising many different zones or “rooms”. Together these rooms within her nature make her the unique individual that she is. These rooms are furnished with experiences and the lessons learned from these experiences. Each room carries its own emotional identity: some rooms are crowded and disorganized, one or two may resemble a battle zone where the dust hasn’t settled, still others reveal patches, duct tape, and scars upon closer inspection. Keep looking and you may find still more rooms characterized by confidence and boldness - in these rooms, the woman is rarely rattled by threats or challenges and is eager to be hospitable and let others in.

 

At the core level, in the control room where she stands watch over all the rooms in her mansion, the woman chooses to submit herself to her husband. She wants a husband-led marriage, and the price she must pay for this powerful union is to give her mansion to her man. She is eager to share it, but still a little afraid that he won’t treasure all the rooms as she does. She has been the mistress of the mansion for a long time, and has put a lifetime of work into looking after every room. Can he really take as good care of her rooms as she does? The wife thinks long and hard about it.  Her will evaluates all the options and finally chooses the path of surrender. She loves her husband more than she treasures her mansion, and she wants to give it to him.

 

Excited by the prospect of sharing herself so deeply with her husband, she hastens from room to room, inserting the key in the lock that opens the door to the outside. In the rooms where confidence saturates the environment, she swings that door open without hesitation, inviting her husband in. Without thinking twice, she gives him the keys to these rooms. He can do with these, her favorite rooms, what he wills.

 

She hesitates a little with the rooms that need some (or a lot of) attention. She is embarrassed by the mess, and would prefer to have more time to restore some order. Her husband assures her that he doesn’t mind a little chaos, and that he will be happy to help her organize that space. She hands him one key after the next, convinced that he doesn’t think any less of her for having a few crazy rooms.

 

Then her husband points out one of the remaining rooms. May he go in there, too? The wife hesitates and reluctantly pushes open the door just a crack so he can see inside. It is clean and tidy, he observes as he peers past his wife. The key is tightly grasped in her hand, and she doesn’t invite him inside. “Will I be master of this room, too,” her husband asks? The wife nibbles her lip anxiously, and finally mumbles “yes, I guess so”.

 

Her husband pushes the door open and steps inside. His gaze sweeps around the room, and he admires the furniture and the artworks on the walls. He notices damage everywhere he looks, and that it has been neatly patched up. He sees the repair tape holding some books together, and the glue marks on the side of the cracked vase. There is wire wrapped around some broken chair legs, and neat repair stitching pulling together the shredded upholstery on the sofa. He wonders out aloud about what happened in this room, and his wife is quick to brush his query aside. When he moves to sit on the old chair in the corner, his wife guides him away. “You’re too heavy - you’ll break it,” she whispers timidly. He moves to pick up a pretty china teacup from the table, and his wife snatches the little cup from him. “Careful, honey. You might let it fall. It’s one of a kind.” She promises to leave the door open at all times, but conveniently forgets to hand the key to her husband.

 

Does this describe a submissive wife? Or does her hesitation to trust her husband in one area of her life exclude her from bearing the title of “submissive wife”? 

 

A wife that has chosen to walk the road of submission has made a wise choice. That choice, however, only gets her to the starting line. From that point forward, she is one of the elite: the courageous few who have chosen to submit to their husbands - she is a “submissive wife”. Ahead of her lies a journey many women hesitate to take. It may scare her a little, but she knows she wants to take that journey. Her heart has converted to submission, but she may not realize that it will take time for the rest of her to follow that example.

 

A wife doesn’t make the choice to submit and instantly get beamed across to the destination of “Perfect Submissionville”. She must walk the long, sometimes rough and thorny, road into submission, one choice at a time. Will she drag her big bunch of keys with her the whole way and hand them to her husband when she arrives in “Perfect Submissionville”?

 

With every step she takes along that road of submission, the wife’s desire to unload the weighty keys will grow. A patient husband who loves first and exercises his authority second will make the journey appear shorter for his wife. He will quickly collect her set of mansion keys as she willingly shares them with him. His bunch of keys will grow as she leaves the little gifts upon each milestone along the road.  

 

Not the patient husband type? Go ahead. Demand that bunch of keys at the start of your wife’s journey into submission, or even part way into it. What will you get? Most likely you will get a few keys. You might even get a lot of them. But will you get them all?